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BACKUS - Chief Financial Officer Sandra Norikane presented the current requests for the CARES Act Grant at the Tuesday, Sept. 1 Cass County board meeting.

There was a total of $578,287 in new requests since the previous meeting from area businesses and organizations. With this amount of requests, there was much discussion on what expenses were actually going to be allowed and covered.

The county received an application from an area church, which brought up discussion on what expenses the county was going to allow for reimbursement. Norikane stated that she had contacted neighboring counties to see how they were handling requests from churches and other nonprofit organizations. It was noted that reimbursement specifically for churches or religious organizations was being limited to expenses incurred if they were providing a public service relating to the pandemic, such as counseling or emotional support. The board felt that expenses the church or religious organization would normally have incurred should still be the responsibility of the church or organization. It was also noted that if staff worked specifically on COVID-19 support their salary would be covered, but any technology upgrades to live stream services would not be covered.

Concern was also brought up with businesses requesting loss in revenue and salary to owners of the business. Norikane shared that any request for loss in revenue has been removed from the applications as this money was not intended for that purpose, and in order for businesses to get reimbursed they must provide receipts of all expenses. Salaries will only be reimbursed if they are proven to be related to extra work being done due to COVID-19. It was also mentioned that these are just applications for the board to approve and all receipts will be brought to the board for approval before payment is expensed. All new applications were approved unanimously, along with the board approving payment of receipts turned in from previous applications.

County Administrator Josh Stevenson requested for a motion to extend the application deadline for the CARES Act grant funding through Sept. 18 due to the continued receipt of numerous applications and funds still remaining. The board approved the extension unanimously.[[In-content Ad]]

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